Computing devices use a variety of fonts to render text characters or glyphs on a display, a printer, or other output device. In typical computing devices, a set of fonts are available to application programs or routines. When an application program outputs text characters in a certain font to a display, a graphics subsystem receives an instruction from the application program and renders the text characters on the display.
There are a number of prior art font types. One type is a bitmapped font wherein each character of the character set is defined with an array of bits. Another type is a vector-based font, wherein the shapes of the characters are defined mathematically. These fonts are more easily scaled than the bitmapped font.
There are a number of available application programs that allow a user to create a custom text images, including font characters, having a variety of visual enhancements. Some of the customizations that can be incorporated into a font include gradient fills, variable widths, outlines, shadows, and other artistic embellishments. These customizations can enhance the appearance of the text rendered using the custom font.
A drawback of using custom fonts is that there is significant overhead in creating this font data. Large and complex code is required to render a complex custom font. This creates a difficulty for user devices that have limited processing and memory capacity but wish to display a custom font.